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21 Apr 2013

Here we are for a little resume of what have been done to decrease the drag.

The front:

-I've already made (before Dijon) some modifications to decrease drag and lift putting an air shield behind the front grill. (For more details, click here)

But i've put the thing to an other level with an other air shield on the hole behind the front bumper. (picture later).

- Widening the fenders:

Behind the wheel arches is a very critical area where a huge amount of air is "trapped". In order to make room for the tires and to free this air, I've opened the fender and widened it from the body. You can see on the picture a little alloy plate in front the door mechanism in order to make the air leave this area more smoothly. It also allows the hot air from the oil cooler (click here for more details) to exits faster.

-The wiper wisher in vertical position.

-Now maybe the most important modification, the air dam. I first wanted to make something like a HUGE splitter like you can see on time attack events. But the car looked too ugly. I really want the car to keep his vintage touch.

So intstead of that abstract tuning art, I've made a little airdam.

-The middle part:

The only thing done on the middle part is the undertray.

I didn't want to put some side skirt, too visible to me, and such as i'm not looking for maximum downforce, it's not that important.

-Rear section:

The diffuser is one of the most visible mod but also the one absolutly necessary to complet the underside of the car. In order to decrease the drag, i've choose a smooth angle.

You can see on the pictures that the fines are attached with the minimum of rivets inside the diffuser, the air passing there has to be as free as possible. That's why the bracket mounts are betweet the diffuser and the chassis. And that's also why I had to modify the antiroll bar mounts, much higher than they were. It's so cool to work wood, it reminds me when I used to build scale air plane back in the days.

After adding the fins, and the mounting, i'll be happy to...

And it's now painted in black !

And finally I've decided to fit a roof spoiler. It's transparent in a way to make it almost invisible.

-Conclusion:

I can't really quantify the benefits of theses mods but, the cooling is much more efficient. Even with the straight pipe exhaust the car is much much much quieter than before while I'm driving to the track. On straights the car reaches more easily its top speed. On fast corners even with a more "mobil" rear geometry setup I feel very confident and I can put the car almost everywhere I want giving me this strange feeling "I could go in this corner way faster". In that way, I think all this stuff is working very fine !

Here is a little GIF to show how the "spray" is now. (you can see how the side ex
haust smashes the flow out of the rear wheel wake as well).

14 Apr 2013

I was wondering how to get a little bit more top speed without touching at the engine,end if I could get a at least something that could looks like something called "ground effect" it would be fantastic... Then a guy (witch his name is wrote on the picture below) talled me to make the air under the car go fast as possible... Okay. Let's try !

So here we are, it weights about the same as the passenger seat (about 8kg) that i will remove for one or two runs. I'm not expecting to get any kind of downforce to be honest, but only an "invisible" way to bring a few kilometers on straight lines.

I also made a little thing that I personally called "Iceberg airdam" because it looks like an air dam... But ?! You will see it later ;)

Ps: you can see a little "louver" in order to evacuate the heat from the exhaust , to not do like Jeremy Clarkson in this Top Gear famous episode ! (At 6:13min)

Ps: you can see that I've switch from the 5w40 Wako's to
10w40 esther new formula. I was very happy with the Wako's, but before
ordering many liters from Japan I would like to test "Les produits
locaux fabriqués en France MONsieur ! Ouiouioui !"

9 Apr 2013

The car made a 2000km trip around Japan in all kind of weather and road, it also made three big track days, so it's time to make a "chmakup" ( check up + make up ^_^ ) .

The travels by sea exposed the car to 3 months at salt atmosphere so many parts have been covered of rust. (The radiator damage is because of the Autoworks Day 2 race (^_^) you can be sure that a griddle will be install after a huge "rebuild/cleaning".

Papot's Garage

Welcome to the Papot's world ! I'm a track addicted driver, Motorsports enthusiast and traveler. You can follow here my evolving oldschool Honda Civic and my trips with it around the world on Papots-Garage blog. You can also follow the last Motorsports news or appreciate Motorsports stuff I like mainly focused about Japanese brands and scene on Papots Motorsports blog. #Enjoycarlife